In the beginning of February, Europe's biggest Free Software developer conference took place in Brussels. The European Parliament took advantage of the many bright and skilled people flowing into the city by inviting them to a meeting about using mobile devices in freedom.
On 7 November 2012 EPFSUG Patron Nils Torvalds hosted an event in the European Parliament titled "Free Tools in the EP". The invitation already boosted the speakers Jonas Smedegaard ("A HEDGEHOG IN YOUR FREEDOMBOX") and Dimitrios Symeonidis ("RUNNING LINUX IN THE EP") but must also have struck a friendly and inclusive chord because the room was almost full of both EP staff and EPFSUG supporters. And most welcome of all were of course Director-General Giancarlo Vilella and Head of Unit Rafael Ruiz de la Torre.
On 11 May 2012 it was reported: "European Parliament to share amendment web tool as open source". That announcement triggered the preparation of a meeting with EPFSUG to discuss the matter on 11 July. Hosted by MEP Marie-Christine Vergiat - and with participants both from the at4am-team and DG ITEC - patrons, members and supporters of EPFSUG came to the meeting to dig into the fundamental reasons for using free software in the European Parliament as well as the best way forward towards the publication and licensing of the source code of at4am - the Parliament's automatic tool for amendments.
In early November, EPFSUG members and supporters were invited to come together to discuss "the hacker perspective" on lawmaking. It turned out that if you say "patch" instead of "amendment" and "code freeze" instead of "plenary vote", many members of our community suddenly understand what you are talking about!
The 4th EPFSUG meeting on 7 September 2011 was again a big success with large attendance and enthusiastic volunteers. Guest speaker was dr. Jones from FreedomBox.
The third EPFSUG meeting on 30 June gathered a handful of EP staff and assistants and a small crowd of Ubuntu evangelists and free software supporters from around Belgium.
The third version of tmail that Jonatan and Erik presented in April now has it's first new mobile user! :-)
MEP Olle Schmidt hosted a lunch meeting with EPFSUG Patron MEP Indrek Tarand and members and supporters on April 19 2011.
EPFSUG met on 22 February to discuss whether or not such a thing as a Free Software user group in the European Parliament would fly...
A sign put up at FOSDEM in February called for helping the EP to get out of lock in.
